Learn to use your wide-angle lens

The Lens Luggers photography club of Western North Carolina is holding a special photography clinic featuring wide angle perspective and control.

The program will be led by photographer Don McGowan from 9 a.m. until noon Tuesday, July 16, at the Old Armory Recreation Center in Waynesville. The program is titled “From Here to There and Back Again: A Journey Through the Wide-Angle Lens” and is an educational and inspirational sketch of what wide-angle lenses do and what they have to offer.

“The wide-angle lens can be readily mastered by the understanding and application of a few basic concepts of how wide-angle lenses ‘see’ the world,” McGowan said.

The program is about 1.5 hours in length and will be followed by hands-on instruction in the field. The cost of the program is $35 for advance registration, $45 at the door. Registration opens at 8:30 a.m. The price includes refreshments and a drawing for a camera bag. This program is open to all skill levels.

The Naturalist's Corner

This year will mark the 117th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC.) The CBC is the longest-lived and largest citizen-science project in the world.

The count began in 1900. It was the brainchild of Frank Chapman, one of the officers of the fledgling Audubon Society. Chapman created the “bird census” as an alternative to the traditional Christmas “side-hunt,” a contest where groups would shoulder their arms and hit the fields and/or woods — the team that came back with the greatest number of corpses would be declared the winner.